Bacteria-related beach closures on the rise at Rye Town Park
August 21, 2024 at 11:29 p.m.
During the height of August, there may be nothing better than basking in the sun and wading in the water for a classic summertime beach day.
But for a few days earlier this month, that was not an option at Rye Town Park.
Oakland Beach was forced to close by the Westchester Department of Health on Friday, Aug. 9, after tests revealed unfavorably elevated levels of enterococci, a bacteria associated with fecal matter contamination. The notice forbade visitors from engaging in any water-related activity and came after heavy rain stormed through the area.
The beach was ultimately given clearance to reopen on Tuesday, Aug. 13.
“This is a real recent phenomenon, and it’s not unique to us. Beaches have been closing up and down the Sound for several days,” said Town Administrator Debbie Reisner. “Last year was the first year we could recall being closed because the bacteria level was too high. It happened a few times last summer.”
The county has issued numerous temporary closure notices to beaches in the Sound Shore region this summer, typically after events of heavy rainfall. Most recently, nine locations in New Rochelle, Mamaroneck and Rye were shuttered following the Sunday, Aug. 18 storm.
Rye Town Park, historically, has had good fortune, able to avoid closures; Reisner said it’s because the beach is in a geographically advantageous position, where water flows easily.
“The difference now is climate change,” she said. “There’s more water. And this is stormwater runoff that’s running through our park and into the Sound.”
The stormwater bringing elevated bacteria levels to the beach originates from the City of Rye streets near the park. While systems are in place to channel rainfall, the storms of increasing severity are proving to be more than the infrastructure can handle.
The pond at Rye Town Park is crucial to the space’s stormwater management system but has become overwhelmed by the intensity of storms over the last few years. A proposal on the table would expand its capacity to collect water runoff.By Sarah Wolpoff
Recognizing stormwater management as a problem that isn’t going away, the Rye Town Park Commission, the governing body overseeing the public greenspace, is in the process of developing a long-term solution to heighten the park’s ability to funnel excess amounts of water.
Last year, they attained funds from FEMA to facilitate a study allowing the commission to better understand and address the issue, which was presented at their monthly meeting in June.
“We’ve known for a number of years that’s we’ve had a lot of outflow, especially from the pond, and the condition was exacerbated by Hurricane Ida,” said Commission President Gary Zuckerman, who is also the Rye Town Supervisor, that night. “We’ve taken a lot of steps since then. For example, we had FEMA pay for the sand from the beach that got washed away. And as part of that, we applied for a grant to study why there was so much flooding and where it was coming from.”
Conducted by the Dolph Rotfeld Engineering Division of AI Engineers, the drainage analysis study found the stormwater management system in the park—which is largely geared around the acre-sized pond in the middle of the land—is getting overwhelmed.
Essentially, Reisner said, the pond in Rye Town Park doesn’t just act as a pleasant area to stroll around, but it’s a catch basin collecting runoff from the area. “But now there’s more water than it can handle,” she said.
James Natarelli, presenting the results of the AI Engineers study to the Commission, described how the system currently works. Two piped connections collecting roadway runoff from the City of Rye’s drainage system are funneled from the Forest Avenue direction into the pond, which also holds surplus from rain falling within the park. From there, an overflow weir spills drainage into the channel that continues downstream toward the ocean.
At the end of the above-ground channel lies a drain inlet that diverts water into a 12-inch pipe which transitions into an 18-inch pipe before daylighting into the Sound.
Under the channel is a 12-inch pipe that’s currently unusable.
“Back in 2019, we found it was clogged with roots, so it’s not really conveying much stormwater,” Natarelli said. “What’s happening is those roots are infiltrating the pipe, separating the joints, and we’re getting groundwater inflow that’s consuming the capacity of the pipe. This pipe is really doing nothing for the pond, all the outlet from the pond is going overland through the channel, which really gets inundated with stormwater.”
When the infrastructure can’t keep up with the flow, water potentially carrying bacteria from the city begins to build up and flood certain areas of the park—including the beach, which the engineers are attempting to avoid with their recommended resolution.
“What we’re finding is the problem is really the quantity of stormwater, it’s just too much for this pond to handle,” Natarelli said. “This pond originally, I don’t know if it was by design, but it just began as overland runoff from the park. It was never intended to take stormwater from the city. For a while it had been working, but it’s met its life, I fear.”
The engineers designed a proposition that involves diverting as much stormwater from the pond as possible. A new piping project on the table, costing between $3.3 million and $3.5 million, would disconnect the two pathways from the City of Rye to the pond and instead install a large culvert to reroute that water through the park and to the Sound at the end of Dearborn Avenue without surfacing on the park or beach.
The project would also make improvements to the pond itself, increasing its capacity during storms to give the downstream infrastructure a chance to catch up and likely installing larger pipes in the management system.
The Rye Town Park Commission expressed approval of the project that night in June, but getting it funded will be a lengthy process. As FEMA funded the study, there is hope and belief that the agency will also provide monies for the infrastructure renovations.
“The other source of revenue could be the Westchester Storm Water Management program which we’ve already started discussions with,” Zuckerman said. “Hopefully between the two of them, we could get 100% of the funding.”
That night, the Commission discussed the desire to request funding with more formalized plans this fall, with the hope to see construction commence in 2026.
Though it will likely take a few years, the beach may be on its way to bacteria-free summers. In the meantime, residents are encouraged to check in with Rye Town Park social media platforms or sign up for TextMyGov alerts on the Town of Rye website before planning beach days to ensure no closures are at play—especially following a big rainstorm.
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